Catholic Problems in Western Canada eBook

[1] This memoir was presented to the Premier of Saskatchewan
at a time when this problem was widely discussed in
the Press. As the legislation, then enacted,
did not bring a satisfactory solution we thought that
the argument as presented would be of service for a
future date.

CHAPTER XI.

DREAM OR REALITY[1]

Higher Education in Western Canada—­Duty
of the Hour—­University Training Condition
of Genuine Leadership—­For Catholics Higher
Education means Higher Catholic Education—­The
Concerted Action of all Catholics in Western Canada
can make a Western Catholic University a Reality.

Never has the world manifested a keener and more general
interest in higher education. The facilities
which Governments offer to place within the reach
of the mass of the people; the benefits of university
education; the enormous sums left by wealthy individuals
for the endowment of chairs and the foundation of
scholarships; the eagerness with which these offers
are grasped by men of all classes; the extraordinary
success of the Overseas University in the American
Army, which had a student body of 10,000—­these
are, without doubt, manifest signs of public opinion
on the matter of higher education. The world-struggle,
we all feel, has shifted to another battlefield, and
the future in every realm of human activity rests
on the mastery of ideas. In that intellectual
conflict, the primary school rooms are the trenches
on the first line of defence; the college and university
lecture halls stand out as the strategic heights from
which the heavy artillery of ideas smashes the way
to victory. Hold the college and university
heights to-day, and the hinterland of industry, commerce,
science, art and politics will be yours to-morrow.

Catholics throughout our Dominion begin to realize
that higher education is the price of leadership.
“Of the many points of contact between the
Church and the modern world, education is the point
where Catholicism has most to gain by energetic thought
and action, and most to lose by an atmosphere of indifference.”
We are waking up from our deep lethargy and beginning
to understand that we shall not have our share in the
shaping of the destinies of our own Country until
our leaders, particularly among the laity, impose
themselves upon the nation by their number and their
value. The magnificent campaign of the “Antigonish
Casket” in favour of higher education and the
exchange of views this point at issue brought from
various correspondents, the successful drive in favour
of Loyola College of Montreal, the growing influence
of the Catholic student bodies in the various universities,
the creation of Laval, in Montreal, as a distinct
unit from Quebec; the tremendous success this newly
born organization met with in its drive for $5,000,000;
all these facts indicate concentration of forces in
the direction of higher education. The national